Kajetan Kajetanowicz and Maciej Szczepaniak have started Rally de España in great style. The LOTOS Rally Team crew hold an excellent second place after three special stages, trailing the rally leaders by just five seconds! Round eleven of the 2021 World Rally Championship presents the penultimate chance to score points in this year’s battle for championship titles.
Kajetanowicz and Szczepaniak started the day with fourth-fastest time in their category on SS1 Vilaplana 1 (20.00 kms) and finished the following test (SS2 La Granadella 1, 21.80 kms) in second position, just 0.5 seconds behind the Spanish crew of López and Rozada. On stage number three, Riba-roja 1 (14.21 kms), the Polish crew set the fastest time, beating also most of the factory crews. They hold second position ahead of the second loop, just 5.1 seconds behind the Finnish crew of Lindholm and Hämäläinen.
– The opening loop was positive for us, we start to gather pace. Our speed is good, we won the final test. Now we will tackle the same set of stages and I think there will be more sand on the road – so it might get really interesting in some places. The factory teams can work with gravel crews and for sure they will have advantage but we compete in our category, doing our best to drive as fast as possible
– says Kajetan Kajetanowicz, the LOTOS Rally Team driver.
The second loop on Friday consists of the same set of three special stages: Vilaplana (20.00 kms, starts at 15:00), La Granadella (21.80 kms, at 16:38) and Riba-roja (14.21 kms, at 17:59).
Starts of Kajetan Kajetanowicz are supported by strategic partner of the LOTOS Rally Team – Grupa LOTOS – as well as Delphi Technologies, Pirelli, SJS Driving Experience and Grupa Sikora.
Rally de España 2021 – unofficial WRC-3 results after SS3:
- Lindholm/Hämäläinen (Finland, Škoda Fabia Rally2 evo) 32:45.6
- Kajetanowicz/Szczepaniak (Poland, Škoda Fabia Rally2 evo) +5.1 s
- López/Rozada (Spain, Škoda Fabia Rally2 evo) +5.6 s
- Ingram/Whittock (Great Britain, Škoda Fabia Rally2 evo) +17.6 s
- J. Solans/Sanjuan de Eusebio (Spain, Citroën C3 Rally2) +22.9 s
- Heikkilä/Luhtinen (Finland, Škoda Fabia Rally2 evo) +35.0 s
- Střiteský/Hovorka (Czech Republic, Škoda Fabia Rally2 evo) +35.3 s
- McErlean/Fulton (Ireland, Hyundai i20 Rally2) +44.7 s
- Kremer/Kremer (Germany, Citroën C3 Rally2) +1:23.2 s
- Simpson/Gibson (Great Britain, Škoda Fabia Rally2 evo) +1:49.6 s
